The Unchangeable State of Being
by midfielder
Summary: We are creatures of habit. story premise: postrescue, AUish because given the way the show's going, that's what we need right now
1. memory

1. Memory

The bed, if one could call it that, is hard and narrow. She shifts gingerly to her side, mindful of muscles sore and tense from the night.

She has slept, an hour or two, the kind of sleep that steadily walks the fine and flimsy line between the conscious and unconscious, which is hardly what you'd call sleep because you never really are.

Never asleep. Not quite awake.

A memory, recent and lucid, finds her unguarded, too tired to resist: of soft cushions, white linens and deep sleep.

And her waking up to the smell of something burning.

_Let me in_

_To see you in the morning light._

"You should've woken me up."

"Good morning to you, too." He smiles, but doesn't look up at her. Instead, he continues flipping over what appears to be pancakes. Burnt, irregularly-shaped, oversized pancakes.

She tries but fails to suppress a laugh.

"Do you even know what you're doing?," she says, leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, and head tilted to the side for effect.

Sunshine filters from the open door, into the kitchen but not before it outlines her form like an apparition crowned in gold light and he's compelled to stop and look. She looks refreshed, light, like a hopeful bubble of morning dew.

Remarkably, he remembers to speak. "They're pancakes, Kate. Can't be that hard."

"And yet somehow you manage to make it _that_ hard," she retorts, eyeing the heap of mess on the counter; eggshells, flour, batter and such. She saunters into the kitchen and takes the stool across him.

He purses his lips in a sheepish grin. "Well, they were all rather uncooperative about the whole thing. The eggs, especially so. But we talked it out," he's able to say with a straight face. He flips the last pancake on the pile in the plate and hands it to her.

"You don't mind your pancakes to be a bit crunchy, do you?," his eyes dancing in mock and mirth.

She leans over the counter, elbows propping her up, and gives him a peck on the cheek. "Oh no, that's just the way I like 'em."

"Good." He's beaming at her, that wide and absorbing smile. "Next time, I'll try to go easy on the crunch."

"Yeah, next time," she says, a ghost of a smile upon her lips, an apparition about to disappear.


	2. conditioning

2. Conditioning

_I want you to believe in life._

_But I get this strangest feeling _

_that you've gone away._

"Jack." Her voice comes through as quiet, calm. It incites in him the very opposite – panic, worry.

He shoots up from his seat, walks to the door and pushes it shut.

"Kate? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Nothing. I'm fine." The tone doesn't change, neutral and composed. Breathing is even. Voice is casual.

She has done this enough for him to know, memorize the little things, the telltale signs when she was lying and when she was not. It doesn't make it any easier though, to know that she was.

"This the day, then, huh?" He takes his seat, physically bracing himself for what was to come.

"Yeah, it is," she says. He listens to her voice for anything that resembles doubt, a smidgen of hesitation maybe.

When he finds none, he slumps unto the chair in defeat but more so, in exhaustion.

He should say something now. He should, at least, try.

But what is there to say, when all manner of argument and bargaining has not and will not change her mind. He has tried before, poured his energy and emotion to every word, all to no avail. Quietly and painfully, he asks himself now if he would be willing to put himself through the same thing this time around. What pains him more is the fact that the thought even crossed his mind.

Maybe someday, it will get to the point where he can shrug it off, stow it away in that part of his mind, along with his ex-wife, father and alcohol. Maybe, after a couple of more months of clandestine meetings and partings, he would finally be as detached and nonchalant as she has been about it.

"Were the pancakes _that_ bad?" See, he can be detached.

"Yeah, they were actually," she catches on to the reference, "but the sight of you getting all domestic on me was what really set it off."

She finishes with a sad sort of smile, knowing her tease was not without a hint of truth. She is a nomad, whose existence depended on mobility, impermanence. And she doesn't quite know what to do, now that he was beginning to feel like what she imagines others would call home.

"I take it I don't look cute in an apron, then."

His self-blame is prevalent and so all-consuming, that it is evident even when he jokes. It chips away a fragment of her heart, already made loose and worn out by guilt, to see him this way. But she can't cry here. No, no, she can't. Not out here, in a phone booth, where she'll be an all too easy target for nosy bystanders.

"Oh no, sweetie," she steels herself, but her voice cracks, nonetheless, sadness flooding the gaps, "you do, you do. That's why I have to go."

"I have to go, Jack."

"I have to go."

"You take care of yourself, okay?"

"You know I will."

"I love you." She doesn't mean it to be so, but it comes out as a plea, an appeal.

The words, side by side with circumstances, present to his rational mind a contradiction. It gives him pause, unable to reconcile it with what is happening and what he feels.

He has heard her say it before, on those few and rare occasions when the illusion of a future blotted out the reality of the past and present. The words have inspired a range of emotions in him and even introduced new ones. But never - never - have those words stir in him anger.

As if in reaction to an invisible slap in the face, his eyes begin to cloud and tear. His free hand runs through his hair in a manic manner, over and over. What was he thinking, letting this…arrangement go on for this long.

There has been a knife buried in his gut and it was his hand on the handle, twisting and jerking it all along. It has taken him all this time to find in himself the ability to take it out.

"You know that, right?"

Perhaps he will survive, with nothing more than a stitch to show for it.

"Jack?"

Perhaps he will bleed to death.

"It's hard to be sure of anything anymore, Kate."

Perhaps.

There might have been a pause longer than she'd expected, because in that second her panic swelled and her pulse jumped, thinking that those might be the last words she were to ever hear from him.

It may have been better if that were the case. For his next words, bare but carefully chosen, effectively crushed her as no alternative ever could.

"But I choose to believe you."

"I believe you."

She puts her hand over the receiver so he wouldn't hear. The sobs that instantaneously burst out of her, the wick lit in her heart and his words exploding in her chest.

"Kate? Are you still there?" he asks.

"Kate?"

"Kate?"

"Kate?"

"Huh? What?," she's nudged awake and she has to blink away the memory. Or was it a daydream.

"Kate? That _is_ your name, isn't it?"

"Yeah, yeah, it is."

"I'm Andrea. Call me Andy."

The blonde woman extends her hand.

"I'm your new cellie."


End file.
